Seriously cannot believe anyone honestly thinks that. No one factor would have been likely to have altered that series. Despite the fact that it's perfectly possible to argue Strauss should have been captain ahead of Flintoff, there is nothing Flintoff did wrong which would have been likely to have reversed the course of any game.

I haven't been listening to TMS today - there's no excuse for subjecting my kids to the x rated goings on at Cardiff - but I wonder if the CMJ & Blofeld are still convinced that the last ashes would have been anything other than 5.0 with Strauss in charge instead of Flintoff.

In order to do that they'd have had to have knocked-over the last two Australian wickets for 10 or so, rather than allowing them to add 90-odd (or whatever it was).

Who thinks Strauss could've engineered that then? It'd have required someone to come on and produce a good Yorker or two. Like, well... Flintoff himself. But, as per usual (captain or not), he'd spent most of the last couple of session sweating to try and knock-over the top-order, and having some amount of success.

In order to do that they'd have had to have knocked-over the last two Australian wickets for 10 or so, rather than allowing them to add 90-odd (or whatever it was).

Who thinks Strauss could've engineered that then? It'd have required someone to come on and produce a good Yorker or two. Like, well... Flintoff himself. But, as per usual (captain or not), he'd spent most of the last couple of session sweating to try and knock-over the top-order, and having some amount of success.

Methinks Strauss would have taken the first 4 beatings well enough to still rally the lads to fight the 5th test as hard as they did th first two, hence surprising an Aussie side that would have been all distracted by three retireremnt ceremonies at the same time.

Methinks Strauss would have taken the first 4 beatings well enough to still rally the lads to fight the 5th test as hard as they did th first two, hence surprising an Aussie side that would have been all distracted by three retireremnt ceremonies at the same time.

Just conjecture, based on what happenedd in 2002-3

England's team was weaker in the Fifth Test than it had been in the First and Second. MSP's harmless bowling and hopeless batting\fielding replacing Giles' harmless bowling and everso vaguely useful batting\fielding; the waste of space Mahmood in the side; the waste of space Read replacing the waste of space Jones; most vitally, Hoggard missed the Fifth Test with injury, allowing Anderson to come back in and bowl infinitely better than he bowled in the opening couple.

England still, despite all this, would've been not-that-far-behind on first-innings if they'd been able to knock-over the last two Australia first-innings wickets - as they should have. And with rough first-innings parity, it's anyone's game. Instead, they allowed a massive first-innings lead thanks to a stand between Warne and Clark.

Seriously cannot believe anyone honestly thinks that. No one factor would have been likely to have altered that series. Despite the fact that it's perfectly possible to argue Strauss should have been captain ahead of Flintoff, there is nothing Flintoff did wrong which would have been likely to have reversed the course of any game.

Blofeld actually said as much earlier this summer. I'm putting words in CMJ's mouth tbf.

Ponting captained fantastically for 4 days and 5 and and a half hours but feel he really missed a beat giving North a bowl at the end and probably over bowling Hauritz.

Thought that Hilfenhaus had to be one of the bowlers bowling at the end of the match alongside probably Siddle. I would have preferred an erratic Johnson over North at the end too.

He's really getting slagged on some Australian-oriented boards.

Bowling North did actually make some kind of sense. After all, he could get through his overs quickly and time was of the essence. It just didn't come off (although I suppose that he could have bowled Clarke). They rarely do.

My thoughts:

I didn't think that there were serious issues with Ricky Ponting's captaincy yesterday. There were some small issues - yes, it is true that he leant on Johnson a bit too heavily and bowling Hilfenhaus more than he did may've had the desired result.

Overall though, I felt that he actually captained pretty well. Bringing on Siddle to get rid of Collingwood was an inspired (if fluky) move, whilst I felt that him putting faith in Hauritz resulted in him bowling as well as he ever has at this level. He seriously put Panesar and Swann (who were far more fancied) to shame. I still don't think that Hauritz should be retained for Lords (the pitch may not suit him like this one did), but Ponting's faith in him reaped more rewards than any non-faith would have. Instead of being a periphery, he was one of the main reasons why Australia went so close.

That is indeed the rub. Australia did very well to get this close to winning on a fairly flat deck. They took 19 wickets to England's 6. It's just that England showed more gumption than they had previously. Kudos must go to Paul Collingwood, who played a near-faultless innings. The guy does benefit on flat decks more than he should (he's not alone there, either), but he is still a seriously underrated batsman.

If anything stymied Australia's ambitions, it was the inclement weather - not really Ponting's captaincy.